It was dreary, back-breaking work and after the first rush of hopeful diggers only the hardiest had remained.
These doughty souls had known for years that it was possible to pick up an occasional small diamond of inferior quality on the dry ground thirty miles south of the river, in fact the surly old Boer named De Beer who owned the ground in that area was selling licences to diamond claims on his property, although he favoured diggers of his own people and was notoriously prejudiced against granting "briefies" to Englishmen.
For these reasons, and also for the more pleasant living conditions along the river, the diggers had not taken too much interest in the "dry diggings" to the south.
Then one day a Hottentot servant of one of the river diggers rendered himself blind falling-down drunk with Cape Smoke, the fierce Cape brandy, and while in that state accidentally set fire to his master's tent and burned it to the ground.
When he was once again sober, his master beat him with a sjambok whip of cured rhinoceros-hide until he was once more unable to stand. When he recovered from his treatment, his master ordered him, still in disgrace, to go into the dry country "and dig until you find a diamond".
Chastened and still wobbly on his feet, the Hottentot had shouldered his shovel and pack and limped away.
His master promptly forgot him, until he returned unannounced two weeks later and placed in his master's hand half a dozen fine white stones, the largest the size of the first joint of a lady's little finger.
"Where?" demanded Fleetwood Rawstome, the single word all that he could choke through a throat suddenly parched and closed with excitement.
Minutes later, Fleetwood galloped furiously out of camp, a cartload of scrapings from the river bed left untreated and his diamond "cradle" abandoned halfway through the process of concentrating the heavier diamondiferous gravel. Daniel, the Hottentot servant, hung from his stirrup leather, his bare feet kicking up little puffs of dust as they skimmed the dry earth, and the red woollen cap that was the insignia of Fleetwood's party blowing back from his bald head to flap like a flag beckoning others to follow.
Such behaviour instantly precipitated a wild panic amongst the fiercely competitive little community of diggers along the river. Within an hour a tall column of red dust rose above the flat dry land; a headlong column of horsemen flogged their mounts while behind them the Scotch carts rumbled and the less fortunate stumbled and slipped in the sandy footing as they ran the miles back southwards to old man De Beer's barren hard-scrabble little farm on which rose another bald stony little kopje, just like ten thousand others, that studded the plains.
The kopje was that same day in the bleak, dry winter of 1871 named "Colesberg" kopje, for Colesberg was Fleetwood Rawstorne's birthplace, and De Beer's New Rush came swarming out of the dusty sun-bleached distances towards it.
It was almost dark when Fleetwood reached the kopje, only just ahead of his followers. His horse was blown, lathered with sweat and white froth, but the Hottentot servant clung to the stirrup leather still.
Master and servant flung themselves from the heaving staggering animal and ran at the slope. Their scarlet caps bobbing above the scrub thorn could be seen from a half mile distance, and a hoarse excited cheer went up from the ragged column that pursued them.
On the crest of the hill, the Hottentot servant had burrowed a shaft ten feet into the hard earth, a tiny scratch when compared to what was to follow. Frantic with haste, casting fearful glances down the hillside at the horde that raced up towards him, Fleetwood drove the centre line of his claim pegs across the narrow mouth of the shallow prospect shaft.
Night fell over a battlefield on which brawny diggers cursed each other and swung punches and pick-handles to clear the ground and drive their own claim pegs. By noon the next day, when farmer De Beer rode across from his primitive two-roomed dwelling to begin writing out the "briefies", which was taal for "letters", the entire kopje was covered with claim pegs; even the flat plain for a quarter of a mile below the slopes was bristling with pegs.
Each claim was thirty feet square, its centre and corners marked with a sharpened wood stake cut from a camel-thorn branch. On payment of an annual fee of ten shillings to farmer De Beer, the digger received his written "briefie" which entitled him to hold and work the claim in perpetuity.
Before nightfall that first day the lucky diggers who had pegged the centre of the new rush had merely scratched the stony earth, but had turned up over forty stones of the first water; and already horsemen were away southwards carrying the word to the world that Colesberg kopje was a mountain of diamonds.
When Zouga Ballantyne's single wagon creaked the last few miles down the rutted red earth track towards Colesberg kopje, it was already half demolished, eaten away as though by the maggots in a rotten cheese, and men still swarmed over what remained. On the dusty plain below it were encamped almost ten thousand souls, black and brown and white. The smoke from their cooking fires blurred the high china-blue sky with dirty grey, and for miles in each direction the diggers had almost denuded the plain of the beautiful camel-thorn trees to feed those fires.
The settlement was strewn about under dirty weatherworn canvas, although already some sheets of the ubiquitous corrugated iron had been laboriously transported from the coast and knocked up into boxlike shanties.
Some of these, with a fine sense of order, had been arranged in an approximation of a straight line, forming the first rudimentary streets.
These belonged to the "kopie-wallopers", the previously nomadic diamond buyers who had until recently roamed the diggings, but who had now found it worth their while to set up permanent shop below the crumbling remains of Colesberg kopje. According to the infant diamond laws of the Boer Free State, each licensed buyer was obliged to display his name prominently. This they did in crudely lettered signs upon the little iron sweatbox offices, but most of them went further and flew a disproportionately large gaudy and fancifully designed flag from a mast on the roof to announce to the diggers that the incumbent was in office and ready to do business. The flags lent a carnival air to the settlement.
Zouga Ballantyne walked beside the offside lead ox of his team, following one of the narrow meandering rutted tracks that ran through the settlement. Occasionally the team had to be swung to avoid the tailings that had spilled into the track from one of the recovery stations, or to avoid a deep morass formed by spilled sewerage and washings from the sorting-tables.
The settlement was densely crowded upon itself, that was the first impression that struck Zouga. He was a man of the plains and savannah forests, accustomed to long uninterrupted horizons, and the crowding jarred upon his senses. The diggers lived within touching distance of each other, every man attempting to get as close to his claim as he could so that the gravel that he won from it would not have to be carried too far to the place where he would process it.
Zouga had hoped to find an open space upon which to outspan his wagon and erect the big bell tent, but there was no open space within a quarter of a mile of the kopje.
. He glanced back at Aletta on the box. She was sitting very still, moving only as the wagon jolted, looking straight ahead as though oblivious of the almost naked men, many wearing merely a scrap of trade cloth about the loins, who milled the crunchy lumps of yellow gravel and then shovelled it into the waiting cradles. Swearing or singing as they worked, all of them oiled with their own sweat in the cruel white sunlight.